


Arrested for Attempted Romance

by Silybum



Series: On the dangers of brain freeze [2]
Category: Ben 10 Series
Genre: Ben 10: Omniverse, Crack Treated Seriously, F/M, M/M, Not Beta Read, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-01-06 16:40:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18392279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silybum/pseuds/Silybum
Summary: Here's the thing: heroes have it so easy in stories—go there, slay that, save this person, ride into the sunset. Eventually, Ben figures that, like everything else, the world at large has lied to him about this.(Or, Ben catches feelings and sometimes they're contagious.)





	1. Love for the world, and we are part of it

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It turns out that love _is_ a competition.

Ben Tennyson makes a living out of turning into different aliens thanks to a watch; he has gone to other planets, traveled backwards and forwards through time, visited alternate realities, and even met different versions of himself; he also apparently has a knack for getting along with aliens better than with actual human beings. With all of this in mind, the sudden epiphany he has about liking Rook, his Plumber partner who also happens to be both an alien and male, is a lot less earth-shattering than he had expected such things to be.

It’s a lot less ‘wait, I like Rook?’, and more like ‘um, _duh (seriously, self, are you just noticing this now?)’_. So, obviously, the only thing to do is take advantage of this newfound knowledge.

So, they go to Mr. Smoothy.

They also order a mountain of chili fries (because Ben figures that this newfound knowledge is best put to use in helping him end Rook’s winning streak at their little game of chili fries jenga).

And then, when it’s final Rook’s turn, Ben starts talking. That gets him a look from Rook, because so far their attempts at distraction have consisted solely on slurping smoothies as loud as possible and making funny faces, but he takes it all in stride. The jerk is really that confident that he can keep his stupid winning streak. Which makes Ben a little twitchy, and a little bit absolutely aggravated, but that’s why he can just smile and bat his eyelashes (like he had seen Gwen do to Kevin so many times: a move that made the poor guy fold like wet paper and was therefore to be admired, coveted and emulated hoping to put it to good use some day), and say:

“I like you.”

Because it really is that simple, even saying it out loud turns out to be easier than he had thought.

(And if his voice comes out a little lower than intended, well, that’s just fine, too.)

Besides, it works like a charm; Rooks looks at him, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, and completely forgetting the fact that he’s in the middle of the delicate operation of extracting a fry from the middle of the pile, and thus sends half of their food tumbling down like a mini avalanche to the floor.

Luckily for Ben, they get an emergency call from the Plumber base right then, and Rook’s too much of a responsible driver to bring himself to question Ben while he’s driving. It’s a good thing; to be honest, Ben is not completely sure that he’s not going to say something that makes the Revonnahgander drive off a cliff or straight into a wall, what with the pleasant rush of adrenaline he’s experiencing. Payback, as they say, is a bitch.

And the mission is just difficult enough to take both of their minds off the pseudo-confession… that, and Ben pretty much passes out right after fastening his seatbelt, and Rook doesn’t have the heart to wake him up before he drops him off home. Or maybe he just can’t bring himself to start that conversation; Ben could believe that, Rook has always been the more prone to overthink things one of the two.

However (and Ben counts this as a win), Ben must be rubbing off on him, because the next time they order their usual combo of chili fries and it’s Ben’s turn to do his best not to topple the chilli-fries mountain, Rook says, with barely a hitch in his voice:

“I like you, too.”

And that should have been the end of it; a tooth-rotting ending with them holding hands and running off into the sunset, or yet another mission, whichever.

Really, it totally could have been the end of that, if Rook didn’t have a record of 15 consecutive wins, which meant 15 consecutive losses for Ben, which meant he wasn’t going to be getting off that easily.

Which is why Ben just grins and says: “Of course you like me! We’re partners; we’re supposed to like each other.”

And if the girls in the table across from them giggle, well, nothing he can do about that. He reiterates: payback, a bitch, you know the drill. Rooks seems to notice something then, because he narrows his eyes at Ben and bristles, even if all that gets him in response is a wider grin.

And then, deviously, and just because he is completely determined to pulverize Rook’s winning streak, he waits for him to grab hold of a chili fry before saying:

“ _Sooo_ , now that we’ve admitted to liking each other, are you going to kiss me?”

The result is, suffice to say, way better than last time: Rook somehow manages to give a full-body twitch, at the same time his arm jerks violently backwards and his head snaps with an audible whooshing sound to gape at him, toppling the entire order of chili-fries on himself. And, man does that make a mess. He’s going to have one hell of a time getting all that cheese off his fur. There’s no well-timed alarm to save Ben this time, so he takes full advantage of the two seconds it takes Rook to snap out of it to grab a fistful of fries and make a run for it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How day breaks, when it breaks, how clear and light the moon  
> melting into moon-colored air  
> moist and sweet, here on the western edge.  
> Love for the world, and we are part of it.  
> Adrienne Rich, “For a Friend in Travail”
> 
> H-happy New Year...! I'm so sorry I dropped off the face of the Earth for so long. I have a bunch of excuses, I really do, but that changes nothing. :/
> 
> Updates will be slow for a while because I kind of ended up not liking a lot of things that I was writing for this fandom and pretty much decided to delete them and start from scrath (and that hasn't been working so well, as you can probably guess). I'll do my best, tho, so thanks for putting up with me!


	2. Your flesh has no more stories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At some point, Kai figures out who’s Spanner.

The sad thing, Kai thinks, is that very few people like Ben for _Ben_ ; herself included.

Oh, sure, one of his aliens, the hero, the watch, the Ben 10. Kai would like to think she knows better now, but she's not so sure. If she’s honest with herself (and she always tries to be), she would have to admit that she finds Ben himself hard to like. It’s not entirely his fault, he’s a victim of his own circumstances and he’s learned to cope with them in his own way; even if he was insufferable to begin with, it’s not like the universe gets to place all the blame on him after pushing him into the grinder more often than not. Kai can understand that.

But (and this is the big but) she doesn’t like him like _that_.

She’s said as much in the past, and she’s always meant the words she’s said to him, even those that were full of barbs. That’s why she had gone nearly crazy trying to figure out _why_ , why had that brat said what he said, what did he mean by that, what the hell had happened, and what had she been thinking?!

It took her a while, a lot of digging around, a lot of failed attempts at getting in touch with the fabled Professor Paradox she’s heard Ben talk about sometimes, but she needed to know who the hell was that kid who thought he had any right to butt into her life, and she wanted to know what kind of future did he come from that had pushed Ben and herself together; probably at knifepoint, she had thought, half-joking, because she didn’t believe it.

When she found out who Spanner was, she didn’t believe it either.

This isn’t even Ben’s fault. It’s that brat’s. It’s that supposed son of hers, who obviously inherited Ben’s penchant to drive her crazy and maybe that’s the only reason she’d end up marrying him.

And it’s driving her up the wall that she’s now expected to do that: to _marry_ him, to _love_ him, to... well, everything else that it entails. Kenneth Tennyson exists, after all, and Kenenth Tennyson is the main reason she wants nothing to do with any of it.

Perhaps it’s a bad trait to have, but the more someone tells her she ‘has’ to do something, the less she wants to do it—whatever ‘it’ happens to be.

It just so happens that in this case the ‘it’ is a big one. Practically the rest of her life.

Ben certainly had no problems with the news, and Kai supposes she should feel kind of flattered but she doesn’t, not even a little. They’re barely acquaintances and he’s already taking her for granted, acting like he’s made a space in is future just for her and he’s waiting for her to happily step into it. Ben 10’s wife.

Because that’s what she will be, won’t she? Never mind what she is now, or what she comes to be, she’ll never be able to step out of the shadow of someone who will end up calling himself Ben 10,000 (and that only because he stops keeping count, she knows that tidbit, too).

She doesn’t want to be _that_ Kai, Kai Tennyson. Tennyson’s Kai. She just wants to be herself.

It feels like a cage, and it feels like being dragged along the proverbial rails of life. It feels like drowning.

Maybe it’s another Kai’s problem, in which case it has nothing to do with her, and maybe something will change that will change he mind, who knows. Maybe the brat wasn’t even supposed to say anything and had just made a whole new timeline in which Kai has nothing to do with him. Maybe now that she knows she’ll just say ‘no’ when the time comes.

Or maybe she won’t, because she didn’t. It’s not like Kai’s an expert at the finer points of time traveling. The brat certainly didn’t suddenly find himself written out of existence.

(A part of her feels guilty for wishing for just that, even if it was only a moment, and she can’t really tell herself she didn’t mean it.)

And the worst—the very worst—is that she knows that it can still happen.

She knows she could love Ben, and she can see herself marrying him and having a family with him, and that stupid, life-ruining brat had her nose; but it’s hard. It takes the fun, the wonder, of her future out of her life. Like reading the end of a book, watching the end of a movie, like being told ‘hey, your favorite character dies’.

_Hey_ , she imagines the brat saying, _this is how it ends, don’t even bother._ Not even the decency of a **Spoiler Alert** to warn her.

It feels like from this day on she’ll just go through the motions, waiting for one of them to put them both of their mutual misery and pop the question, because what else is left?

She’s sixteen going on seventeen and already out of options.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your flesh has no more stories  
> or surprises  
> Margaret Atwood, “Eventual Proteus”
> 
> Geez, am I bitter about this or what? Now, don't get me wrong, I don't dislike Kai. But then, I don't feel any particular way about her, because I somehow managed to miss most of the episodes in which she appeared, so I'm just constantly going ??? when it comes to her.
> 
> But! Spanner/Kenny trying to 'fix' Kai and Ben's relationship at one point in time that warranted no such intervention was a dick move, okay? It really was. I can't tell you why it makes me bristle so much, but it does, so here we are. Also, yes, this does count as 'shippy stuff' in my head, for some reason.


	3. I saw what love might have done

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, fate dictates one thing. Sometimes, someone looks at said thing and figures, after some contemplation: ‘you know what? fuck it’.
> 
> (Warning: Language, yes, really.)

If Ben didn’t have the previous experience of the last remarkable road trip he had, he would be surprised at how many asinine events can fit in the span of only two months. As it is, he’s more surprised at how well they’ve gotten at dealing with the increasing weirdness that seems to be perpetually following them, and that inevitably increases exponentially when they’re together.

At any rate, it’s all over now. Gwen has already returned to her University along with Kevin and the first thing Rook decided to do was filling an exhaustive report on their little trip at the Plumber Headquarters. Ben wasn’t ready for it to be over, though, so he was taking the scenic route back home.

The summer ends and the world feels different. Ben feels different, at least a little, and that’s why the scenic route takes him to the home of Kai Green.

He’s not even out of the Tenn-Speed 2.0 and she’s already looking like she’s tired of his presence. Which, okay, it’s actually pretty fair, considering the way he had behaved after the whole thing at the museum. Just thinking about it makes him want to cringe a little bit. For many reasons, but mainly how insensitive he was. Granted, no one had ever accused him of being a beacon of sensitivity, but even he expected better from himself.

“Hey, Kai.”

“What do you _want_ , Ben?”

Ouch. He doesn’t really blame her, but it still stings. He does his best to offer her a friendly smile.

“To apologize, mostly.”

Kai crosses her arms and raises an eyebrow, very obviously not believing him.

“Really? Since when does Ben 10 apologize?”

“What? Come on, I apologize all the time! I mean, when it’s my fault.”

Kai doesn’t quite smile, but it’s a close thing. At least she doesn’t look like she’s feeling harassed by Ben’s mere existence.

“Which is _all_ the time?”

“Hey! I’m trying to apologize here, work with me a little!”

Kai finally smile and Ben nearly sighs with relief.

“Alright, alright, I’m listening.”

“Good. Get on,” he says, gesturing grandly to his bike. “There’s a place I want to show you.”

Kai’s face crumples the moment the words leave his mouth and Ben had honestly no intention to make it sound like an invitation to a—what? romantic getaway? date? kidnapping? He has no idea what it must have sounded that to Kai, but it was obviously the wrong way to say it.

“Ben,” she looks so resigned, so downtrodden. Even if he hadn’t been a little bit in love with her before, he could have never stood to watch one of his friend look like that. 

“It’s not what you’re thinking, honest! I’m really trying to apologize! No ulterior motives whatsoever!” He nearly shrieks the words, arms moving wildly as if trying to give credulity to each desperate statement by kinetic energy alone.

At least it works, Kai’s face returns mostly to normal, although still guarded and she makes a show of inspecting Ben’s new bike. If she needs a moment to gather her courage Ben won’t say a thing. After all, it took him nearly a month to psych himself up for this.

“You’re really not good at this,” she says, at last, taking a seat in the back of the bike, which almost immediately spits a helmet at her.

“Yeah, well,” he shrugs a little helplessly, sliding into the driver’s seat. “I never said I was any good with apologies.”

“Really? And here I thought that practice was supposed to make perfect.”

“Yeah, yeah. Just wear the helmet, okay? Grandpa will kill me if I carry passengers without one.”

Kai laughs a little at that, which is a relief, and Ben adds, if nothing else to keep the atmosphere nice and easy, and because he really, doesn’t want to blow this up:

“You don’t have to hold onto me, if you don’t want. It’s not like you can fall or anything.”

He doesn’t want to make things weird. Or, well, weirder. But the situation is about as weird as it gets, so, really, he’s just trying his best.

‘Be considerate,’ had been Gwen’s advice. ‘Just tell her the truth, man,’ had been Kevin’s not so useful advice. ‘Just think about what you would find more agreeable if you were in her place,’ had been Rook’s, but honestly, if someone had treated Ben the way he had treated Kai, that person would have found themselves minus a few teeth, no alien transformation required.

So he just breathes, puts on his own helmet and tries to not tense up too much when he feels Kai place her hands on his sides. Barely there, more reassurance than anything else, but it’s enough. It was a sign that he hadn’t completely screwed up this relationship just yet.

He reeves up the engine and they’re off. It’s a marvel, this second version of the Tenn-Speed. He had built it along with Rook and Kevin, which had done a much better work than he had the first time around, although the first version had been pretty damn good, in his opinion. It doesn’t take them too long to reach their destination, not in small part thanks to the fact that this new bike can hover over hiking trails like no one’s business (thanks for that, Kevin).

Back when Kevin was having mutation troubles, Ben and Gwen had gotten scarily good at finding nice places where people wouldn’t bother them, or be bothered by them and their unfortunately mutated friend. They had never gotten around visiting all of them, preferring to stay close to home, but they did have a list and Ben had chosen this place from that list for a reason. Two, actually.

Ben stops the bike, takes off his helmet and announces: “This is it!”, as cheerfully as he can fake it.

He can practically hear Kai rolling her eyes at him.

“This is where, Ben? And what, exactly, are we doing here?”

“I told you, I’m apologizing.”

_For a lot of things_ , he doesn’t say.

“And you couldn’t do that somewhere else?”

Ben gets off the Tenn-Speed, debating whether to offer Kai to help her out or not. In the end, because his parents raised him right, he extends his hand to her.

“I told you, there’s a place I want to show you. Please, Kai? Just trust me on this.”

Kai takes his hand, and Ben is silently thankful even if she drops it as soon as she’s out of the bike.

They are somewhere that used to be a national park with some impressive mountain ranges, high enough in one of said mountains as to not risk being bothered by anyone and, if he says so himself, the view is pretty damn amazing.

“It’s cool, right?”

He turns to look at her but Kai’s face is an impassive mask that he thought she reserved for chauvinist, stuck-up historians who have nothing better to do but argue about the importance of her and her grandfather’s findings. It’s not something he thought he’d ever be on the receiving end of.

“Ben, what are we doing here?”

Ben nods, not quite wincing, but it’s a very near thing.

“It will be easier to show you.”

Ben walks toward the edge of the cliff, stopping only when it’s almost dangerous, with the sound of both the wind and his own blood pounding in his ears.

This is something he’s used to doing on his own, something he discovered nearly on accident and that he does whenever it gets to be too much, which is a lot of the time, regardless of how much better he had gotten at pretending otherwise. This is not the first time he has visited a place taken from the list they had made for Kevin.

But the least he can do is give Kai this.

Ben takes a deep breath, cups his hands around his mouth, and bellows:

“ ** _Fuck time travel_**!”

It startles Kai so badly she jumps. She hadn’t been expecting that, even if she shares the sentiment.

“What the hell, Ben?!”

Ben doesn’t turn to look at her, even if he knows he probably should, but he doesn’t think he will be able to get the words out if he does. Still, he owes her an explanation, if nothing else so she knows why this is so important to him.

“I do this a lot—don’t tell Gwen about it, or Rook, or anyone, actually. But, I do... I do this a lot. When I screw up, like, real bad. It helps to, you know, let it out. Rook would call it cathartic, I guess.”

Like that time with Khyber, he had shouted obscenities that would have made his mother feed him detergent soup for weeks if she had heard until he lost his voice. And then he had thrown rocks.

And the time the whole Universe had collapsed because of the Anihilaarg, he had just gone somewhere with lots of snow and screamed wordlessly until he risked hypothermia.

And there were other, innumerable times, before and after, and he was under no delusions that this little trip would be the last.

He doesn’t clench his hands into fists because he refuses to feel ashamed of this.

“I know it’s not much, I know it doesn’t make up for the way I acted, but.” Well, he’s sure there’s a but in there somewhere, probably. “Sorry. I already told you I’m bad at apologies, but I wanted to do something.”

He finally turns to look at Kai and is surprised at finding her already on the edge of the cliff, a thunderous expression in her face, and he has no time at all to prepare himself as she straight up _hollers_ :

“ **FUCK TIME TRAVEL**!”

This time, it’s Ben who almost jumps out of his skin.

“Wha—Kai! A little warning would be nice!”

But Kai is no longer listening; like Ben suggested, she’s letting it all out.

“Fuck time traveling brats! Who let you skip curfew by a few decades?! Fuck FATE! Screw you, Tennyson!”

She’s about to turn to Ben and clarify ‘not you’, but Ben’s already joining her.

“Yeah! Fuck Ben 10! Asshole, get a real job!”

Kai smiles, almost giddy, before turning back to the void and cupping her hands around her mouth.

“Yeah, fuck you, Kai! What crawled up your butt and died!”

Ben’s next shout is delayed by a snort at that and Kai pushes him, shoulder shaking with suppressed laughter.

They keep shouting until their voices refuse to come out, until they’re wheezing garbled insults at every little flaw, mistake and shortcoming the can think of, until they’re able to laugh at them. Until forgiving them, and themselves, is a little easier.

Ben turns to her and, just by the look on his face, Kai knows what he’s going to say before he even opens his mouth. But he says it anyhow. She deserves to hear it, after all.

“I’m in love,” is what he says, and, implied: _not with you._

(The feeling that rushes through her at that moment is almost violent, it roars in her ears and it feels like gasping for breath like a drowning man. She wouldn’t call it relief, exactly, and yet, it is what it must be.

The weight of the future falls from her shoulders and it leaves her unbalanced; her footing lost, Kai doesn’t know how to move toward the sudden endless unknown extending before her.

And yet—

It must be relief, wanting to sink into the ground and cry because her life is her life again, even if she won’t allow herself to do it, not just yet. The terror of the unknown is a welcome change.)

Kai nods, teary-eyed and smiling, and bumps her shoulder against Ben’s.

“You’re a good friend, Ben.”

“Yeah, well,” Ben gives her a one-armed shrug. “I was a jerk.”

“Yes, yes, you were.”

“Hey!”

Kai’s laugh is free and bright, and she looks radiant in the dying light of the sunset; she looks beautiful. He can see why he could have fallen in love with her, married her, spent his life by her side. He hopes, whenever he is, that the Ben Tennyson that became the Ben 10,000 that he knows, is aware of what a lucky bastard he was. He hopes, wherever they are, that all versions of himself do something to deserve something like that, like what he has found in someone else.

He’s in love and not with the person the Universe decided he should have a future with, it sounds like the beginning of a tragedy, but it isn’t. What happens next, how it ends might be, but love in itself isn’t, this is something Ben believes. He might make mistakes, he might make a mess of it, as he has done with his previous relationships, it might very well end in tragedy, for all he knows. For all he knows, it might not last.

(Ben has seen a myriad futures and knows it probably won't, at least in some other time line, but that's a problem for some other Ben.)

It might not last, but it's beautiful now. It's bright and warm and it makes him happy.

It might not last, but then again, it might. Ben can work with that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I saw what a child must love,  
> I saw what love might have done  
> had we loved in time.  
> Mary Oliver, “A Visitor”
> 
> Hey, remember how I said that I actually didn’t dislike Kai? Yeah, I couldn’t leave this alone. Thank you so much to all the people who commented on the last chapter, all of your opinions got me thinking about this more and more and this was eventually born. It took me a while to write because I really wanted it to come out right, which I more or less achieved, so here we are!
> 
> Also, I’m terribly sorry for taking so long, I had been saving to subscribe to amazon prime because it seemed that I could re-watch the series that way, but apparently I can’t. So now I have no money and no Ben 10, and I’m currently re-watching what I can on one of those websites that my antivirus doesn’t like. :/


End file.
